


Can You Hear Me?

by xiujaemin



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M, Fluff, slight! angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 14:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3413471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiujaemin/pseuds/xiujaemin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There, on the subway, as someone leaves, someone new arrives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can You Hear Me?

A train whizzes past in a blur, but Juvia only stares, not even blinking. A few strands of her hair sticks to the side of her face, caught up in the wind’s torrent, but she doesn’t move to brush them aside, standing as still as a statue. _I’m here again. Can you hear me?_

Beside her, a guy steals furtive glances in her direction, unsure if this was some filmed joke for a gag show or whether someone was just filming some type of documentary on the daily life of some girl who seems to be either caught up in her own thoughts to do something as much as gulp or just doesn’t have the energy to move her muscles.

 

He looks around, seeing no cameras or any other indication that this was a set-up. But what was she doing, standing so stiffly in her place?

 

So he looks around once more in an attempt to see if someone is sharing his discomfort from the scene, but no one even bothered to so much as look in the girl’s direction, as if she wasn’t even there in the first place.

 

He shifts his position and transfers the heaviness of his weight to his other foot, feeling unease creep up. Was she a ghost?

 

“Dammit, this is why I prefer riding a bicycle over this,” he mutters to himself, the girl’s lack of mobiility creeping him up even more, making him gulp in  apprehension. “I will definitely break Natsu’s bones the next time he tries to lay a finger on my bicycle. That dimwit.”

 

A new train arrives, unloading passengers just as the doors open. A new onset of people flock over the opened mechanical doors, barraging quickly to get to their next destination.

 

But the girl stays rooted to the spot, chest barely rising and falling to accompany the slow breaths that she’s taking. This time, he is uncannily reminded of the girl in the subway station in the middle of the night from a web comic he’s read recently, where things didn’t end happily for the male lead who just so happened to be at the wrong place and at the wrong time.

 

He slaps himself awake from his over-imaginative daydream, intent on not scaring himself off anymore. “It’s the middle of the afternoon, for god’s sake! There won’t be any ghosts out in broad daylight, that’s impossible!” he scolds himself, and in his peripheral vision, he sees the girl turn her head ever so slowly in his direction, face blank and eyes eerily glassy.

 

Common sense would tell a person to run away quickly once stuck in situations like this (i.e., a creepy girl staying immobile for minutes and then turning her head just to look at you), but Gray isn’t really famous for using his wit at times like these, so he unzips his bag instead and reaches in to swipe away a piece of paper and crumple it, throwing it right at her face just to see if it would pass through, for the sake of finding out if she really was a ghost or demon or whatever that is.

 

The scrunched-up piece of yellow paper bounces off her nose and she closes her eyes, looking as if she’s trying to control her temper—the first telltale signs of emotion he’s seen from her for the past few minutes. Looking at her this way makes him think how stupid it was to think of her as a ghost. How could someone so alive seem dead, anyway?

 

“What’s your problem?” She hisses, and under the harsh light of the sun filtering through the open spaces in the subway, he realizes that even with an annoyed expression clouding her face with exasperation, the girl was pretty—beautiful, even—with her blue locks and midnight blue eyes emphasizing her features. Her pink lips were set in a thin line, eyebrows scrunching up a little.

 

“Nothing, I just thought you were a ghost.” He shrugs nonchalantly, and he expects to receive a mouthful of mean words from her—because well, what he did wasn’t really that plausible—but instead her expression changes and her shoulders shake a bit as she laughs softly, a melody that doesn’t need any lyrics to be considered as music. Gray decides he likes seeing her this way a lot better.

 

“I guess you could say that.” She answers, but despite the smile on her face that had replaced the passive-aggressive streaks lining her features, there was something odd about her eyes; a certain sadness blending in with the aura of loneliness she emits.

 

“I’m Gray, by the way.” He holds out his hand, and she shakes it with hesitancy, as if he would somehow grab her throw her off the railway or kidnap her. One way or the other.

 

“Juvia,” was her short response.

 

“You’re dropping off at Magnolia, right?” he asks, and her eyes widen with surprise.

 

“How’d you know?”

 

“I have a great insight,” he laughs, but she only gives him a sideways look in response, so he stops laughing midway and clears his throat. So much for first impressions. “I’m just kidding. It was just a lucky guess.”

 

Another train stops in front of them, putting their conversation to a temporary halt, and he looks back at her, grinning. “I guess that’s our ride. Let’s go?”

 

Juvia bites her lower lip, uncertainty clearly showing. _But she’s still waiting for someone._

She’s known for quite some time that the person she’s waiting for isn’t going to arrive, but she’s been waiting anyway. Maybe because even if she knows that he’ll never arrive, that he’ll never pick up his phone and dial her number to call, and that she will probably shrivel up on that very same place she’s always standing on waiting for him despite knowing that he will never show up, a part of her still hopes that he will.

_I’m sorry,_ she thinks, conjuring up an image of the guy with ash blonde hair and that smile that never faltered from his face every time he used to meet her at the same stop, back when he hasn’t left yet. _But I guess the time’s up._

She makes a step forward,the first time she’s did without waiting for at least an hour, just standing there, staring off into space, eyes lingering over the lights reflected by the metal sides of the trains that pass by. _I’m going to leave now. Can you hear this?_

 

But nothing happens, and she knows it’s stupid that she’s even thought that something will, as if the person she’s thinking of would suddenly pop up out of nowhere and hug her from the back and murmer apologies into her ear and say that it’s okay, that he’s not going to leave her without so much as saying goodbye anymore.

 

So this time she steps away from her usual spot, not to completely leave someone behind, but to make room for someone else.

 

 

 

 

Gray steals another glance at the girl who’s sitting beside him in that cramped subway train on a hot summer afternoon, only to find out that she’s already staring at him, a smile gracing her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> rly, this is,like, my first anime fic. i.. uh... just wrote this for my brother who requested a fairy tail! fic in exchange for helping me with some of my exo fics.


End file.
